Palau: National disaster preparedness baseline assessment

 The NDPBA includes a Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (RVA) which examines several components of risk including hazard exposures, vulnerability, and coping capacity. These findings are further reviewed through the lens of PDC’s unique Disaster Management Analysis (DMA). The DMA contextualizes the RVA and guides recommendations designed to increase resilience and reduce disaster risk. The Government of Palau faces continuous and mounting effects of climate change, flooding, landslide, tropical cyclone, earthquake, tsunami, and coastal inundation hazards, in addition to the global COVID pandemic. These events present challenges and opportunities to help understand and actively observe the capabilities of Palau’s disaster management structure.

Some of the recommendations from the report include:

• Update the legal framework to support national and community disaster preparedness in Palau.
• Strengthen the institutional capacity of the National Emergency Management Office (NEMO) and the Office of Climate Change (OCC).
• Increase resilience at the subnational, local, and community levels.
• Leverage existing partnerships with international aid organizations, international/foreign funding agencies, donors, and the US military to enhance regional capacity.
• Develop a formal mechanism to assess progress made toward achievement of the DRR (Sendai Framework), Climate Adaptation (Paris Agreement), and UN SDGs.